Seibertron wrote:Combiner Wars Optimus Prime is a great CW Motormaster and Nemesis Prime. The mold was intended for Motormaster and was remolded into Optimus Prime, who was interestingly introduced first, but was meant for Motormaster first. Motormaster !== Optimus Prime.
In my book (and essentially off-topic from this forum post), CW Optimus Prime is not a G1 Optimus Prime (despite IDW's fiction). Physically (as a toy), he's more along the lines of a "Monster Convoy" (aka Armada Optimus Prime) or an Energon Optimus Prime.
"was meant for Motormaster first"
I find it hard to believe that the mold was designed as Motormaster first. Let's look at some major design details:
* Solitary truck cab instead of cab and trailer all together
* Legs and feet that are blatantly G1 Optimus Prime's and have slots designed for the handles of the Optimus Prime version's guns with one or the other becoming an awkward leftover on Motormaster
* Prominent smokestacks, which are much more a feature of Optimus' design than they are of Motormaster's.
And then there's the janky torso mode that feels very much like it was shoehorned to fit the Optimus Prime robot design rather than the robot being designed to become a good torso. Two major problems:
* The arm sockets tab in with a single thin tab at a bad angle that leads to them getting untabbed whenever you try to swing or sometimes even just rotate attached limb robots. This is especially a problem for Motormaster because Menasor is a sword-user.
* Having the legs face the intended way in torso mode blocks the combined form from being able to bend at the knee with several limb molds (including the Stunticons) because the Optimus Prime feet get in the way; you have to turn the legs tire side forward to fix the problem, and even that only works because the feet are sculpted at a tilt. If they were sculpted straight then knee articulation would be blocked both ways.
So for my money, the CW Optimus mold makes a far better standalone Optimus than it does a good CW Motormaster. And feels very solidly like it was mainly designed as such.
I don't give a rat's fart about the IDW fiction. I treat CW Optimus as a Generations representation of G1 Optimus because he's sculpted to look like him (beefcake proportions aside) - look at the head, look at the legs, look at the primary gun - and colored to look like him, and is of a good size to fill the role in my collection.
Also, now that you've finally included him in the gallery, I believe he would like to say:
"Hi... Thanks for noticing me..."